We Do Adventure

I'll confess that at first the thought made me cringe. Google refused to come to my rescue and the growing realisation dawned: I may have invented a myth. That is a rather grand way of saying that the lies I told as a tour guide my brother took as truth and presented to YouTube. Obviously, I didn't intentionally set out to misrepresent my adopted home, or to mislead my brother, or his YouTube audience. I still maintain that my information came from somewhere other than my fertile imagination, but I have yet to find the facts to back this up. Clearly a video about a different kind of tanning booth has great potential on the internet. It was only after seeing it titled and tagged that I began to doubt the description I'd given. Online all I can find is references to 'mills' or 'water mills'. (Now I know which sounds more glamorous; perhaps the local tourist office is missing a trick!) I quickly came clean to my brother about my reservations and he countered

The last couple of days it has been attempting to snow here in Jajce. This has jogged my memory, for better of for worse, reminding me of this photo from when we had snow settled everywhere earlier this year. Against the white blanket covering the ground this mystery object stood out as we studied the view from our kitchen window. Rowan declared in disgusting and I, employing a sensible look-don't-touch policy, reckoned it to be some kind of animal skin, probably removed at one of the butcher's shops near our house. Whatever its origin, and however it ended up opposite our home, it provided hours of entertainment for the local stray dogs. For the better part of a week we watched it get smaller and smaller until, with the snow, it disappeared altogether.

Over the past couple of years I've written a number of posts about uni-hockey. However, I've never posted a photo or a video that shows the game in action. Thankfully, last weekend my brother was on hand to do the honours. This, then, is his first-hand account of his first experience of uni hockey, on his first visit to Bosnia and Herzegovina.

This isn't the first time we've had reason to write nice things about EasyJet on this blog. We hope it won't be the last. But least pessimism get the last word let's celebrate the bizarre experience that was collecting my brother and his family from Zagreb airport yesterday. We knew they were flying EasyJet, in fact we'd noticed tickets for the new route become available and recommend they book a cheap trip months ago. We'd since forgotten they'd booked on the inaugural flight. Without this context we did wonder why we were seeing the aircraft ceremonially doused by the hoses of two fire tenders as is taxied towards the terminal. The presence of a media scrum in the arrivals hall had us wondering if a Croatian celebrity had shared the flight with them. When a lone piper struck his first drone note in baggage reclaim we were lost for an explanation. Thankfully the British Ambassador to Croatia was on hand to provide the missing pieces of the puzzle. As we say

On today's impromptu after-lunch stroll my wander up to the view point overlooking Jajce's waterfall was interrupted by a familiar looking strip of yellow tape. MINE: not an indication of ownership but an announcement of clear and present danger. After a quick glance around I decided they was no need to do what Hilary said she did in Bosnia. I did not duck and run; I stopped and took this photo for you. Only last week I saw a new article posted on Facebook about a cliff fall a few metres from where I was standing. My mind was putting two and two together hoping for four. Was the danger not so much a mine as an undermined area? Is it wrong to suspect that MINE tape was being used as an all-purpose hazard tape? Having experimented with various ways of capturing the view and the tape in a neatly composed image I wandered back down to the path that leads out to the side of the falls. The sun was in completely the wrong place for capturing a good photo – why I had headed for t

A piece on the BBC website about the Easter Islands caught my eye this morning. It made me think about a conversation I had on Friday morning out by the lakes in Jajce. I was drinking coffee with a local friend who was saying it was a shame more had not been done to develop the potential of the lakes as a leisure destination. It's true they have huge potential, their banks bear testimony to various efforts down the years to capitalise on this, yet it's fair to say much of this potential remains unfulfilled. I'll confess my knowledge of the Easter Islands runs little deeper than recognising the origin of the giant talking statue in Night At The Museum, but their story got me thinking over breakfast today about the pros and cons of achieving potential. The lakes in Jajce could easily become one of central Bosnia's go-to summer locations, but at what price to the local community. We know the lakes are loved by the local community but perhaps the price of overcrowding an

The sun came out on Saturday. It's not that we haven't seen it for months but this was the first time for months that you could say it was warm, or at least warmish. Running around at uni-hockey training I wasn't the only one to end up in a t-shirt. Since the start of January, after training on Saturdays, Novi Most has been running a social session for a couple of hours. Most of the team will turn up joined by a number of other young people from the area. So far this year the sessions have happened inside – apart from one snowy weekend that saw some impromptu 'ice hockey' happen in the area behind the building. This week the sunshine and warm weather prompted our co-worker to suddenly decide to get all the lads clearing leaves and generally tidying up the yard outside. He is unashamedly keen to have this space ready for the onset of barbecue season! And so an industrious half hour from the boys saw a splendid piece of early spring cleaning accomplished under the